dahamwirdensalat

Endlich den hier gekauft und das

gemacht, damit das

endlich besser wird.

It’s not about how a situation is. It’s about what you can do to change it. The emphasis on action is the key difference.
When I look at my mail folders, I find a structure that tries to reflect “the world” out there. Mailing list mails go to their mailing list folders, personal mails from friends go to the folder with their name on it, project folders contain a complete list of every mail I ever received about that project.
This is not only stupid, this is harmful. I’m not the historian of my own life. I’m the protagonist. If I ever get famous, others will do the work of reconstructing my personal timeline. And if I won’t (which is to expect), my timeline doesn’t matter the least.
If you record what is, and not how to change it, you get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things that are not the way you want them to be. This blocks your thoughts on what you need to do, leaving you with an archive of things that are wrong.

This applies to your personal life at least as much as it does to work.

I actually try to get my shit together. I even bought David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. Since my “Inbox” is 99.9% digital, I thought: Why not use a software helping me with Getting My Things Done?
Turns out, I’m so not de jour, it hurts. Every software out there wants OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or Java 1.5 (which – ironically – is only shipped with Tiger), and I’m still sitting on my iBook with 10.3, refusing to pay the €100,- for the OS upgrade I’ll receive for free once I buy a MacBook (which I sooner or later will).
Guess I’ll buy a bunch of manila envelopes tomorrow and print out all my mails, buggy code and documents to review. And I’ll need a magic marker.